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10 Questions American wheelchair rugby team leader John Bishop
John Bishop has been in a wheelchair since he broke his neck diving into shallow water in 1976. He plays wheelchair rugby at the local level in Florida and is also the team leader for the U.S. wheelchair rugby team. The Americans have never lost an international tournament; the only team that has defeated them (in a preliminary match during a tournament last year) is Australia, who they will face on Sunday in the gold medal match. 1. What is the reaction of spectators who watch wheelchair rugby for the first time? They're amazed and excited. At the Paralympic level, all wheelchair sports with the exception of rugby are non-contact. In basketball there is some contact, but it's incidental and illegal. In rugby it's part of the game. 2. What kind of disabilities do the players have? They're all quadriplegics; their disabilities affect their upper and lower bodies, all four limbs. The majority are due to spinal cord injuries, with the level of disability being determined by where in the neck they were injured. 3. How much physical ability do they still need in order to be able to play? They have to be able to push a manual wheelchair, of course. The most disabled have limited use of their upper arms and probably limited hand use, with no fine dexterity. The others have stronger arms and more function in their fingers. For the most part, paraplegics have no use of their trunk muscles. So they wear elastic waistbands to keep them upright in their chairs and give them the ability to lean over to pick up the ball. 4. How are the players' positions determined? Your role in the game is determined by your level of disability. The [more disabled] players, their role is for the most part defense. They will generally not carry the ball except for a couple of seconds at a time. They do "bunting," which is bouncing the ball and hitting it with their wrists; it's unique to wheelchair rugby. The [less disabled] tend to play a more offensive role. But in rugby, you play both offense and defense. 5. The program guide says the teams can have both male and female players. And your assistant coach is a woman. Have there ever been any women on the American team? No. There are no women on any of the other national teams in the Paralympics either. But in New Zealand last year, the home team had a female player. Only about a dozen women play the sport in the U.S. Women tend to shy away from the sport a little bit because it is so aggressive. But as aggressive as it appears, there is a lot of safety in the sport. Because of the strapping, the chair is part of your body, in a sense. 6. Do injuries occur during play? Usually the injuries are pretty minor: cuts, bumps and bruises. Occasionally a player gets a finger smashed. I've seen people taken to the hospital after a game, for example for a shoulder injury. But I've never seen anyone get seriously hurt. It could happen, for example if you were to flip backwards and hit your neck on someone else's chair. 7. Aren't the players especially wary of being hurt, given the reason most of them are in wheelchairs is because of an injury? I don't think anybody who participates in sport goes onto the playing field and thinks of getting hurt. Whether you're able-bodied or disabled, if you're playing sport and doing something you love, the thought of being injured just doesn't come into play. 8. Given the aggressive nature of the sport, do the players ever have brawls? No; in the seven years I've played rugby, I've never seen a punch thrown. You let your chair do the talking. If someone does something to antagonize you, you give him some good powerful hits [with your chair]. 9. In the last U.S.-Australia game, two big opposing players charged into each other's chairs at high speed, and both of them were airborne for a moment. Does it hurt to get rammed like that? Usually not. Because of the design of the chairs and the fact that you're strapped in, the chair absorbs the impact. But if you fall sideways, it can hurt. Generally though, the support staff will run out to help the guys up, and then they're right back in the game. 10. Are you intimidated by the "haka," the Maori war dance the New Zealand wheelchair rugby team does before its games? It doesn't bother us in the least. We tend to do our own war dance on the court once the game starts.
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